Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the rise of the pontic steppe scythians
Major Greek city
Major kurgans
N
Palus
Maeotis
(Sea of Azov)
0 25 miles
0 25km
K e
r c h
P e n i n s u l a
Theodosia
Myrmekion
Panticapaeum
Nymphaeum
Tyritake
Hermonassa
Patraeus
Phanagoreia
Pontos Euxeinos (Black Sea)
Kepoi
Ta m a n P e n i n s u l a
Gorgippa
5.6 The Kimmerian Bosphorus joining the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov was a much-used seaway. On
either side on the Kerch and Taman peninsulas Greek cities clustered and around them were many tombs
of the Scythian elite.
enaeum near Theodosia, and Stratokleia near Phanagoreia. From now on the highquality
grain produced on the arable lands of the Kerch Peninsula was loaded onto
convoys of ships and sent south to feed the citizens of Athens. Other exports such
as fish, furs, and slaves were more widely distributed throughout the Aegean world.
The Bosporan Kingdom
In the early decades of the fifth century the towns of the Kimmerian Bosphorus, some
thirty or so of them, banded together, with Panticapaeum as their leader, to form the
Bosporan state the better to organize trade and to coordinate protection against the
steppe nomads. In or about 438 bc leadership of the state was appropriated by one
Spartocus, a member of an aristocratic family of Thracian origin resident in Panticapaeum.
Thus began the Bosporan kingdom which was to survive until the arrival of
the Goths in the third century ad. Under successive rulers the kingdom flourished and
expanded. By the end of the fourth century bc it included not only the whole of the
Kerch and Taman Peninsulas but also a wide swathe of territory along the east side of
the Sea of Azov as far north as the mouth of the Don, the homeland of the Maeotians.
The Bosporan kingdom was a cosmopolitan state comprising the descendants
of the original Greek families, Hellenized Thracians, and the more recently arrived
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